Chapter Text
By the time the Inquisitor found herself back in Skyhold, the majority of the fortress was swaddled in sleep. She made far too much noise fighting the covers tangled around her legs and stumbling to the nearby wash basin, but she doubted she’d wake anyone. Her quarters were so isolated from the others’ that she probably could have screamed and upended a bookcase and no one would have been the wiser.
But she didn’t want to smash or shout. All she wanted was to see her face.
When Solas had offered to remove her vallaslin, she’d hesitated only briefly. Her tattoos were who she was, where she came from, a reminder to herself and everyone else that the Inquisitor was first and foremost a Dalish elf. She liked that, in her proud way. She liked that it set her apart. It was important to remember she would always be separate from these Andrastians, even if she didn’t really know what she believed anymore. But in the moment that he’d asked her to allow him to work his intimate magic, knowing the truth of the marking’s origins and having just committed herself for better or for worse to Mythal’s service…
She didn’t want to be anyone’s slave. Not Mythal’s. Not her past’s. And maybe she wasn’t so different after all. Maybe she was becoming more like the Inquisition every day as it became more like her. Maybe this would denote a new beginning.
It had felt right. Like a gesture of her love for him and for herself. So she’d let Solas set her free.
She just didn’t realize he meant to set her free from himself as well.
With trembling hands, she held the little vanity mirror up to survey the damage, still not really believing that the tattoos she’d waited so long to receive, that had taken so much effort to do in the first place, could be so easily given away. But there she was in her reflection, pale with her pain, features drawn but impassive, and the only purples left on her skin were the natural undertones of her complexion.
She looked young and vulnerable. Like the lonely little girl she used to be before her face had been inked. Like the scared child she might have been under her vallaslin all along.
She felt naked.
She felt tricked.
She felt alone.
~~~
Her walk for fresh air was already going badly. Without realizing it, her feet — the little traitors — had taken her on their favorite path to Solas’ rotunda, and though her heart longed to be there as well, longed to beg him to explain or convince him to change his mind, her head told her it wouldn’t be good for either of them. Maybe he just needed space and time to consider again, as he’d done with their first kiss in the Fade. There was much of Solas that reminded Hal’la of the stories of the elves of old, the ones who could take years to decide the simplest things. She loved him for that. So she would respect his wishes even if it felt like her heart was wading through the burning cold of the Frostbacks after Haven.
But Hal’la didn’t want to be alone. Couldn’t stand the thought of it. So after hesitating briefly outside the door to the mural she loved so well, her feet turned instead down a series of chilly corridors to another door around which no light escaped.
She knocked lightly to avoid waking anyone else and then waited. When nothing happened, she knocked again, a little louder this time, and waited. It was her impatience that was finally bringing her hurt to the surface, the mild panic at the thought that Dorian might not wake or even be in his room that proved the perfect pathway for the boiling pain she had so far successfully trapped in her chest. She lifted her fist to rap one last time when a clatter and a soft curse came from inside. There was the sound of a candle being lit and footsteps coming toward her, and then the door opened and Dorian stood before her, a housecoat on his shoulders but left lazily open so that she could see clearly in the flicker of the flame his bare, muscular torso and his absurdly fancy smallclothes.
Despite his obvious drowsiness, he took one look at her wan features and quirked his brows. “Oh dear. Who’s died this time?”
He was such a welcome presence that Hal’lasean almost started crying right there, but she maintained her composure through brute force of will. Dorian lifted his candle in the darkness, holding it closer to her, and squinted hard at her quivering expression.
“What have you done to your face?” he mused. “Not that I’m complaining. Facial tattoos have been out of fashion in Tevinter since— oh. Oh, no. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I’m no good at crying.”
Dorian’s face twisted with his distress, but the tears were flowing freely now down Hal’s unmarked cheeks. The mage clumsily set aside his candle and pulled the Dalish woman into his arms, awkwardly rubbing her back through her robe. When she held him tightly in response, he grimaced uncomfortably.
“Okay. Okay, let’s just…” He swallowed and peered down the hall in both directions, grateful for the empty dark and lack of prying eyes. Rumors about their supposed trysts were one thing, but it wouldn’t do for the Inquisitor to be seen openly weeping, much less being comforted.
“You know, Hal,” he informed her, closing his door with his foot and leading her to sit on the end of his rumpled bed, “I think you may be the first woman I’ve ever taken to my bed.” He was greatly relieved when she gave him a watery smile. “Well,” he admitted, “there was this third cousin twice removed when I was fifteen, but only because she was very pushy and I thought it would please my father. We kissed rather clumsily a few times and then I told her she’d make a handsome boy and she left the room crying.” He grinned crookedly at her. “I meant it as a compliment.”
Despite her wet cheeks and her sorrow, Hal’lasean let out a pitiful laugh. It was enough to allow her to regain some of her composure or at least to stem the flow of tears. Dorian leaned across her to reach his bedside table and rummaged through a drawer before producing a beautifully embellished handkerchief. She took it gratefully.
“Are you going to tell me what happened or shall I guess? Though I warn you, if you force me to guess, they will be both outrageous and offensive.” Dorian grinned rakishly in an effort to further cheer her up, but her sadness tugged at him. Soon he was softening his features and reaching out to draw his thumb across her cheekbone. “Of course you don’t have to tell me, do you. There’s only one mage in Skyhold who could take these from you and live.”
“He didn't take them,” Hal admitted finally, her voice strained. “I gave them to him.” She shook her head. “Gave him permission.”
Dorian allowed that to sink in, fondly tucking the elf’s overgrown bangs behind her pointed ear. “If you’d told me a year ago I’d be sitting nearly naked in bed with an elf woman,” he joked, but gently. “You know, in Tevinter, we give each other our bodies, not our tattoos.”
“It’s complicated,” she murmured and he smiled his understanding.
“I’m finding elves always are.” And that, finally, made her smile again. With her crying almost completely finished, Dorian ventured a little further in his questioning. “If you gave him your tattoos, shouldn’t you two be copulating like rabbits in the Fade somewhere?”
At her affronted expression, he thought hastily back through his words and blanched. He was always saying something terrible to the elves in the Inquisition, whether he knew it or not. “I didn’t mean rabbits,” he assured her. “I just meant—“
The Inquisitor shook her head to assuage his guilt. “It’s okay. I know what you meant.” But she offered nothing further.
“So what happened?” he prompted again.
It was an easier thing to tell than she’d expected, though her voice shook and she occasionally had to stop to dry her tears or find the right words. Aside from one outburst -- "Ha! So there were slaves in Arlathan as well, that hypocritical--" "Dorian, please." -- Dorian listened attentively and with sympathy. But Hal could see the way his expression was darkening and his muscles tensing as she explained how Solas had simply…walked away.
His lips pursed irritably beneath his sleep-tweaked mustache. “He brought you there, told you that, removed your vas— vasel—“
“Vallaslin.”
“Yes, removed those, said all those lovely things to you, kissed you, and then…?”
“No,” sighed Hal, “it wasn’t just a kiss, it was…” Her frown looked so different without the dramatic contrast of her tattoo against her cool-hued skin. “Things were getting…heated. It didn’t feel as though he’d planned it this way. Or maybe he did. I don’t…I never know with him. But I think he meant things to go differently. Perhaps he’s confused or scared or…”
“Or a pretentious ass? A despicable coward?” suggested Dorian helpfully. “A complete—“
“Dorian, he hasn’t done anything wrong,” she argued.
“He hasn’t done much right.”
Though the gesture was dripping sorrow, the Inquisitor favored him with an affectionate smile. “You’re a good friend, Dorian, Vint or no.”
The mage rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, but he couldn’t hide the pleased way his entire face warmed at her approval. “Yes, well, don’t go telling anyone. I have a reputation to uphold.” She grinned almost fully and his heart swelled with relief. He made a show of draping himself languidly back on his pillow, stretching his scantily clad body in the candle light as though he were trying to seduce her. “Speaking of which, if I absolutely must have a woman in my room this late at night, we may as well make it worth the gossips’ time.” He put one arm out to hold her and patted his chest invitingly. “Come, come, Inquisitor. We may be celibate, but we’re not dead yet.”
The look she gave him was sidelong but amused. He wicked away the flames in the room with his magic and she curled up alongside him, fitting herself comfortably to his body in a very different way than she would have with Solas. While Dorian blushed and tried to pretend he was unaffected by the sweetness of their friendship, Hal reached up to delicately twist at his askew mustache.
“If you were really my friend,” she told him with a smirk, “you’d shave this. In solidarity.”
"If you don’t shut up and go to sleep,” he countered with a defensive scowl, “you’ll wake up with a shaved head.”
Hal grinned and planted a kiss on Dorian's cheek. They both settled in, preparing for sleep.
“You love your mustache more than me?” she wondered, her cheek on his chest, his hand on her hair.
Dorian let out a little hmph. “I will never love anything as I do this mustache.”
They fell into a silence heavy with their private thoughts. It was a long time before either of them finally passed into the Fade.